E-mail Is For E-mailing
I’m starting to think an e-mail etiquette booklet should be required reading before anyone receives access to a mail server. There’s no dearth of annoying customs in cyberspace, but this latest one really takes the cake. It’s almost worse than spam. There, I said it. Worse. Than. Spam. At least I understand spam. Like it? No. But I understand the purpose behind it. You see, I always considered it intuitive that e-mail is primarily for conveying a message, not transferring a file. But lately I’ve been receiving a fair amount of empty e-mail. Messages with nothing in them. Except an attachment. The sender will write the message in Microsoft Word and then attach that to an otherwise blank e-mail. Usually the .doc file is a complex...
Read MoreeBay Goes Political
I had no idea that eBay was a topic on the presidential campaign trail. Earlier this month, Vice President Dick Cheney was stumping in Cincinnati when he brought up eBay as an example of why economic data isn’t fully factoring in a robust recovery. “That’s a source that didn’t even exist 10 years ago,” he said, pointing out that the data munchers aren’t accounting for the fact that “400,000 people make some money trading on eBay.” Sensing that it was something worth pouncing on, the person angling to replace Cheney as the country’s VP took aim. “He said people are selling a lot of stuff on eBay,” John Edwards said. “When we count the bake sales and lemonade stands, we’ll have a roaring...
Read MoreThe Most Wonderful Time of the Year
Well, it’s official. God has forsaken the civilized world. I know this because I just saw the first Christmas decoration of the 2004 season in a store. On July 7th. To be fair, it was an online store. Specifically Hallmark.com’s free e-card section. But if it’s being done online today, you know it’s only a matter of time before early July becomes the accepted start date for holiday merchandising in the malls. You know the little miniature advertisement you have to watch while your e-card “loads”? This was an ad encouraging the viewer to be the first to get a look at the highly coveted, must-have, don’t-care-that-Christmas-is-as-far-away-as-it-ever-gets freaking keepsake ornaments. The Hallmark marketing guru who...
Read MoreI Love My Palm
Palm Pilot, that is. For years, I’ve had a Palm Vx [see it], a PDA renown for its ruggedness and reliability. I literally would toss the Vx around the house, stuff it in my back pocket, etc. I even sat on it a few times, but it soldiered on with nary a complaint. The battery life in the Vx has been declining over the past few months, but I’ve been reluctant to let it go. It’s like throwing away a friend, stupid as that sounds. Funny how we get attached to every little inanimate object, isn’t it? But the other day I bit the bullet and sprang for a new Sony Clie PEG-TJ27. Moore’s Law proves true once again, as the Clie was procured for only $199 while the old Vx cost nearly $500. The Clie is quite a bit more advanced that the...
Read MoreNew Tool: URL Shortener
As if the world needed another “make a shorter link” tool. http://www.rapp.org/url/ I prefer not to use 3rd party services for this kind of stuff because you never know when makeashorterlink.com or tinyurl.com will go down for the count. Or when the service will go to hell. Or, more realistically, when they’ll start charging for their services. I suppose URL shorteners are so common now that they can’t charge money. But they can resort to banner ads, pop-up ads, or require registration. At that point, any emails or web links that go through them are fubar’d. Plus, when sending out shortened URLs to others, I prefer to send them links from my own domain. Those who are less technically inclined won’t have to worry about...
Read MoreJust Say “No” to Macintosh
Reason #1845 Not To Own A Macintosh I’ve never been a huge Macintosh fan. It’s not that the computers themselves suck, though I must admit I’ve used the Mac a lot over the years and in my experience it crashes more often than the Windows boxes I’ve owned. My dislike of the Macintosh has more to do with the irritating attitude displayed by so many Apple fanatics. You know the type. They wear black all the time, attend poetry readings in burned out buildings in the bad part of town, and make it perfectly clear to anyone within earshot that you are nothing unless you own a translucent computer that says “Hello” when you turn it on. Add to this the fact that Apple Computer continually runs ads with the same holier-than-thou...
Read MoreFidoNet
In 48 hours I’ll be somewhere over the Atlantic on my way to London. Three weeks without web or e-mail access is going to be strange. I haven’t been without e-mail that long since…. well, since I got my first internet e-mail address in 1989 (ronrapp@f940.n103.z1.fidonet.org). Man, that brings back some memories! My first online experience was when I started college in ’89. I had a cheap Intel 8086-based machine made by Tandy (aka Radio Shack). It had a 40 meg hard drive, a 13″ color CGA monitor, ran at 4 MHz, and probably cost about $2,500. And yet it was worlds above my old Apple II. Anyway, one of the first things I did was add a modem to the computer. My roommate Paul has purchased a 1200 baud modem for his Amiga 500, and...
Read MoreCable Modem
I sometimes get a bit overeager when it comes to high-tech toys, even if they are justifiable ones. A recent example is the At Home cable modem service. I’m finally getting it installed on Friday. I’ve wanted cable modem or DSL service since the first time I surfed via a T-1 line. There is just no going back once you’ve experienced that kind of thing. Plus, I spend so much time online that it’s going to be a major contributor to increased efficiency and a better bottom line. But mostly it’s just plain fun. It literally was not available on my block until this week. I’ve been calling the friendly folks of “At Home” for months, asking when it would be available. First it was “late 1997″, then...
Read MoreHacked
I got a call from the network administrator at Pacific Blue Micro today. PBM is a client of mine, and apparently somebody with too much time on their hands decided to hack into one of their Silicon Graphics machines using my account. They took advantage of a weakness in IRIX and gained access via a brute force type of attack. It would have gone unnoticed but for Super Eric, a former PBM employee and programmer extraordinaire. Eric noticed that I seemed to be logged in at 3 am, a rather odd time. He also noted that I was connecting from UU Net in Salt Lake City, not Deltanet in Orange County. Either I had moved to Mormon country or something was afoot. So Eric did a “cd /usr/ronr” to see what was in my directory. Lo and behold, it was a C...
Read MoreMicrosoft v. Dept. of Justice
It is such perfect timing for Pick Up Ax, I tell ya. This Department of Justice lawsuit against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices is fascinating. Strangely enough I’m actually on Microsoft’s side on this one, even though I love Netscape. I was watching Burden of Proof on CNN today and they had lawyers for both sides arguing their respective cases. It’s maddening how few of these attorneys understand the technology they’re condemning. So many of the players in this case (and on today’s Burden of Proof) said, almost proudly, that they couldn’t install Netscape’s browser without the help of their nine year old kid. That essentially makes them computer illiterate. I mean, how hard can it be to point your browser...
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